Monthly Archives: August 2014

One of the gifts of living past sixty is coming to treasure the people who help you along the way; you see Christ in them, and remarkably enough, they see Christ in you! Bill Stough was one of the chief stewards of my life, ordaining me, first a deacon and then a priest.

Bill had this way of loitering by the door of this faith we share, lying in wait for the unsuspecting traveler. Even though we may not even have known at the time, we were looking for God, Bill knew. More importantly, Bill knew God was looking for us.

The day I wandered by tugged by the longing of my heart for home. One Sunday at Christ Church, Lexington, Kentucky, I knelt down to say my prayers before the Eucharist began and looking at the altar I suddenly knew this was my place and I wanted what I sensed there.

It was that very longing that drew me the day I made an appointment to meet with the Bishop of Alabama. We were seated and Bill, asked what I had come for, and I told him. He took me seriously, which the is the greatest gift one can give to another. My memory is that His Grace gave me the gift of two hours, an unheard of waste of a Bishop’s time. He told me candidly that many people seek ordination, more than he could employ. But he also said, “If you are still interested to come back in a year.” I left that day affirmed by the fellow who loitered by the door. I did go back a year later, and that story is for another posting.

I learned the most important things from Bill by watching him, especially when no one was looking at him. What was he like in the unguarded moments? He was a wise man, kind, direct and terrifying when righteously angry. I came across his blessing a couple of days ago. I share it with you because it tells you all you need to know about this man, whom I love(d). He said it always, in a small group in the woods or at the altar of his cathedral.

“Let us depart from this place in peace, and as we go on our way, forget not the poor, pray for the sick, make no peace with oppression, and love one another as Jesus has loved us. And the Blessing of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be upon you and upon all God’s people this day and forevermore. Amen.”

You may have noticed in the last few days what appears to be an Arabic sign popping up all over the place. I checked it out and immediately changed my profile picture on Facebook to this sign. Why?

The sign is the letter N (nun) in Arabic. It is the first letter of the word Nazarene, the name by which Christians are known in the Middle East. This letter has taken on sinister meaning as the forces of IS or ISIS mark people, property or chattel with an N meaning that the property or persons now belong to the ISIS. Fellow Christians are given the ultimatum to convert to Islam, pay a tax or die. Many have taken a fourth option of fleeing for their lives. The tax of Christians and Jews by Muslims is an ancient practice from the early days of Islam. Check it out. I am unaware that this is the practice of modern Islamic states but it has been a teaching of the religion.

This reflects the problem of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists of any variety have in common a desire to regain the golden age of their faith. For Muslims it is the seventh century for many Christians 1950, but be that as it may such golden ages never existed. These fanatics (check my posting from August 9th – The True Believer) are setting out to remake the Caliphate of the Seventh Century in the Twenty-first. Pray God they fail. It will require someone stop them as they cannot be reasoned with by honorable men. .

I have learned in my long study of Family Systems Theory that what my teacher, Rabbi Friedman, said about such is painfully true. In systems thinking all living things composed of protoplasm organize themselves in the same ways. What is true on a cellular level is metaphor for all other levels of living things. They will behave in predictable ways. Ed Friedman labelled them pathogens.

Pathogens do not self-regulate

Since they do not self-regulate they ooze into their neighbors space

Also, since they do not self-regulate themselves they never learn from their experience

They do not have to be hostile in order to be malignant. Oozing into others space is sufficient.

Pathogens achieve their conscious or unconscious effect because those around them allow them to ooze into the others space. Remember Munich in 1939.

It really does not matter if we are talking about cancer cells, packs of dogs or ISIS: they all function the same. Something will have to be done about them for the cancer they represent in the body politic.

I invite you to wear, wave or affix the Arabic Letter N to Facebook, your lapel or the bill board down the street as a mark of solidarity with our fellow Christians. If someone reading this is not a believer please do so because the weak and innocent should not be murdered, enslaved nor raped and tortured. Call on those who have power and the responsibility for leading nations to stop these fanatics before the region is in flames not only of churches but of everything in their path. For this is a Caliphate of Evil. Muslims who do not welcome them are destroyed as well. What I say is not about the content of their belief as it is a critique of their succumbing to ideology. Succumbing always leads to trouble (Carl Jung).

The Holy Innocents

Please join me all of you of good will in praying for these Christians and othersr, indeed all in danger on account of their faith. I propose the collect for Holy Innocents as a place to begin.

We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of ISIS [Bethlehem by King Herod.] Receive, we pray, into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

God grant us and to his whole world peace and the knowledge of His love for the doing of His will. . JWS

NOTE: I looked back through old posts today and found this one from 2007 and it speaks to 2014. As we press forward in the RenewalWorks process the discipline of holding the course and choosing passion keeps the fun going. Hang on for the ride.

I was going through my collection of periodicals this week and came across this quote in an article in the December 2001 issue of Fast Company a smart business magazine. Seth Godwin in the special issue on leadership after 9/11 said,

That had resonance and my mind immediately applied it to the Church (as my mind does everything) and I realized that if I allow myself to get too caught up in the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’’ – to borrow a phrase – my passion disappears. Yep, that’s true and if it is true for me I suspect it is true for at least half of the Episcopal Church. That being said, I refuse to allow myself to be terminally distracted, choosing to continue in faith the way that I have begun. And so have the people of Saint John’s Parish.

The term “True Believer” is a common expression in American speech. What most people do not reaize is that the turm comes from a book of that titile. Eric Hoffer published this study of the nature of mass movements in 1951 (the year of my birth).

Given the rise of increasingly violent groups fueled by pathological ideology, Hoffer tells us that the content of the ideology is less important than the process of fanaticism. This is a distinction that we really must learn. It is not really about Islam, though the ideology in this case is Islamic. ISIS’s fighters, having sucumbed to ideology do not fear death. Actually dying is martyrdom for these young men. Their opponents fight to protect their families. Those with a death wish have an advantage over those who have a life. Thus in the short run evil has an edge. In time, God willing, the rest of us will rise up and put an end to this most recent eruption of a chronic infection of a will to power.

Fundamentalism longs for a golden age that in fact never existed. Deep belief in fantasy promotes delusian. Delusion demands not faith, but rather a kind of “sccumbing” that produces fanatics. I also recommend Carl Jung’s insights in the last chapter of his book, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, where he lays out the dangers of succumbing to or being addicted to anything.

I highly recomend Eric Hoffer’s classic and the insights of Carl Jung on fanaticsim.

“Just what is it you are trying to do here?” A good question, I get it in some variety regularly. What would this shift produce? What would we look like if our culture shifted? 1. The first and most importantly, each person takes maximum responsibility for his or her own soul. 2. The clergy and congregation understand that the clergy are not the paid Christians to go and do the ministry in the name of this community.

What are the consequences of these two shifts? Paradoxically the church would look like is goes now and at the same time be radically different in function, For one thing there would be fewer programs! Hearing this many will wonder if we are too lazy to do our jobs? I will confess that we do many things because they have been done that way in the past. I remember at least five years ago the staff here worked hard, came up with ideas (good ones), crafted programs, arranged dinner and provided offering so that everyone of every age group had a place to go and something to do when they got there.

After Labor Day we launched our creation and in only a matter of weeks we were down to a handful of souls. Guilt and shame rose up among us at staff meeting like a bad odor from the cellar. Finally, we did a non-scientific survey and what we overwhelmingly learned was that people were tired and children needed to be home. We pulled the plug. My colleagues (you know the professional Christians) and I felt guilty but we dealt with it privately. We have had no sustained education on Wednesday evening since and largely no one ever mentions it to me.

This is hard. The “professional Christians” – hereafter to known as PC (layers of irony, that) work hard producing programs, classes and groups. Do not misunderstand me – formation is essential. However, formation must be initiated by the laity. When the laity discerns the slow leak in their souls and wants to do something about it, we will not have offer programs, will people to come and nurse your resentment when they do not.

As hard as it is, the PC’s must lay down the professional sole-practitioner persona and become ordinary priests and deacons fulfilling our proper role (that we were ordained to do). Above all those of the white collars must know that, contrary to the wisdom of this age, they are not MBA’s in dog collars.

As hard as it is, laity must move beyond a sort of “fashionable ignorance” of the scriptures and the faith. At least in the South, Episcopalians live in a closed loop system of anxious, and reactive fundamentalism. Since many of us are converts, refugees from catastrophic certitude; even exposure to garden variety Christianity produces an allergic reaction. Like all allergies, of course, it is an overreaction and with proper soul work recovery is assured.

The last thing that people need is another thing to do at night. Families need to be together. But what about their souls; isn’t the decline of programs bad? If you are living in 1975 it is bad. When people take responsibly for the feeding and caring of their souls most of the education takes place in home, offices and vehicles.

It happens at 5:00am when a man rises an hour early to drink coffee and read his Bible in the Bible challenge. When he has a question he will call me and I will be my best to get him what he needs. That is very different than chasing him down the street begging him to come to class that addresses nothing he needs for his soul at this point and in this time.